


you can blame me (if it helps)

by jdphoenix



Series: at first sight [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU of an AU, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Episode: s01e19 The Only Light in the Darkness, F/M, Gen, Minor Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward, Minor Skye | Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward, Trashbag Grant Ward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-06-26 13:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15663732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Skye doesn’t understand. Not who he is beneath the agent of SHIELD mask or why it’s so important that he shut people—a certain someone—out of his life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [it wasn't love at first sight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5775259) by [jdphoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix). 



> This was written for an AU meme on tumblr in which I was sent the name of a fic I'd already written and I'd write an AU where something went differently. Specifically, the prompt was for the Jemma/Grant fic "it wasn't love at first sight." You shouldn't have to read that to understand this or even ship biospecialist to enjoy it but if you do want to take a look, it should be linked above.
> 
> Title from Cam's "Diane."

“You don’t need to shut people out,” Skye says, and training’s all that keeps Grant from recoiling. As it is, he can’t help dropping his drink onto the table with an audible thunk.

She doesn’t understand. Not who he is beneath the agent of SHIELD mask or why it’s so important that he shut people—a certain someone—out of his life.

And today’s the end of that. He’s said goodbye to her for the last time. She’s off to Portland with the others and he’s got Skye. Fuck fate. Fuck destiny. _She’s_ the one he wants.

He tells Skye that he’s a bad man. He tells her about how Christian made him hurt Thomas, about how his parents didn’t give a shit. And you know what? She comes to him. She hears all of that and she comes closer, touches him, holds him.

Not a lot of women would do that. He can think of one in particular he _knows_ never would. She’s too straight laced, too moral, too goddamn SHIELD. She’d never accept these darker parts of him.

But he doesn’t care about her. Stupid Daniels with his soulmate obsession has these thoughts crowding around in Grant’s head when what he should be thinking about is Skye. So he does. He loses himself in her hands and her lips and the warmth of her body so close to his.

The kiss breaks slowly and he enjoys the way she ducks her head after, like she’s still holding onto it, holding onto him. He likes less the way her hand goes limp on his arm and her smile falls away.

“Oh my God,” she says, her voice breaking on the three little words.

He looks down, thinking he’s missed something. Maybe there’s blood under his nails or some piece of Koenig’s throat ended up in the couch cushions.

It’s worse than that.

The photostatic veil Grant’s worn over his left arm ever since John pulled him out of the woods is hanging loose. Koenig must’ve torn at it while he struggled and the damn thing held together well enough not to be noticed until Skye accidentally wrenched it free.

“I can explain,” he says.

She pulls away, leaves him cold and alone while she backs around the coffee table. “You can explain why you have _Simmons’ soulmark_ on your arm? Seriously?”

Fuck. He knew she’d recognized it—there’s no way she couldn’t have—but hearing her say it like that only drives home how badly she’s taking this.

He stands to reach for her, but she only recoils farther. “I don’t want her. I want _you_.”

Two minutes ago he told her how he tormented Thomas on Christian’s orders and she looked at him with pity. Now? Now there’s only disgust.

“You- you don’t- you want- _ugh!_ ” She spins away, into the open space behind the couch. Grant follows, hoping to catch her, only for her to spin back in fury. “And she doesn’t know, does she? She has _no. Idea._ ” She punctuates the last two words by slapping his chest. _Hard_.

When her hand lands a little too close to his ribs, he catches it out of the air before she can do it again. “ _Skye_. Calm down.”

“Oh, you did _not_! Simmons is my _best friend_. And you’re her soulmate and you _kissed me_. Twice!” She shakes her head at him before pulling away. “God. All this time and you didn’t think she had a right to know?” 

He gets that, he does. When he saw Simmons’ mark, it threw him for a loop. But it only proved what he’s always known: that it’s all bullshit. Because  _Simmons_? Seriously? She’ll never truly understand him, not like Skye.

Skye. Who’s clutching the back of the couch like she can’t physically stand under the weight of this revelation.

For a moment, Grant struggles with the urge to punch something. He almost regrets that he already killed Koenig; it’d be a nice way to blow off some steam.

He breathes. He can fix this. Skye was always gonna find out eventually. She already knew he had a mark and he was on his way to making her understand that it didn’t matter what destiny said if they wanted different; what would the identity of his soulmate matter if they were in love? He just thought she’d find out _after_ she accepted his true loyalties.

And with that in mind, he’s still got a job to do here. He’s gotta salvage this relationship and this mission both.

“Okay,” he says. “You’re right. How about- how about we go to Portland? I know you weren’t any happier than I was about letting them go alone. We can stop on the way, get the hard drive unlocked, I’m sure Simmons will be happy to have all that research back, it’ll probably help soften the blow.”

Skye straightens and before he sees her face Grant knows he’s fucked up. “Her _research_? You think that’s gonna make up for-” She gestures to him like he, in his entirety, is the problem here.

He doesn’t know why. Simmons is as ill-suited for him as he is for her. They’re _both_ incompatible and he did her a favor by sparing them a lifetime of unhappiness together.

But Skye’s not done laying into him. “And don’t pretend you care about her. You’ve asked about the stupid hard drive like three times already and-” She freezes, her eyes fixed across the room. “Where’s Koenig?”

Grant looks, fearful, but there’s nothing where she’s looking, no missed sign of what was committed here less than an hour ago. “I don’t know.”

Skye backs away, eyes on him now. “Don’t bullshit me, Ward. This is his office so where-” She lunges, so suddenly Grant moves to intercept her on instinct. But she’s got the better angle and reaches the tablet on the coffee table. “He’s not moving,” she says after a few taps. “He’s in a storage closet and according to this he hasn’t moved in twenty minutes. You wanna tell me why?”

Shit. Of course Koenig’s got ridiculous security tracking everyone’s every move around this place.

Grant pastes on an expression he hopes is the right mixture of confused and innocent. “Skye, I don’t know. Maybe the guy’s got narcolepsy or something.” He reaches for her but she pulls away. He sighs. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She just shakes her head, horror written across her features.

“Skye-”

“Garrett’s not dead, is he?” she asks. “You’re here for him. For the hard drive.”

He adds shock and hurt to his expression. “What? Skye- how could you even _think_ \- We’re _friends_ , I thought-”

“ _No_.” She’s got the tablet up against her chest, clutching it like a lifeline. “No. My _friend_ Ward would never hide a matching soulmark from Simmons. He’d never kiss me and make me betray her like that. But someone who was just pretending to be my friend all this time? Someone who’s really … who’s really _Hydra_? Yeah, him I could see doing all that.”

Grant goes still but his mind turns rapidly, searching for a play that’ll work here. “Okay,” he says, backing off – and, in doing so, putting himself between her and the door. “Okay. It’s been a long few days. I think we’re both just a little emotionally charged so why don’t we each take a breath?”

He does exactly that, filling his chest until his ribs scream at him, but keeping a smile on his face all the while like he’s indulging her little delusion here. She doesn’t follow suit, but she _is_ breathing so he lets it go.

“Better? Now. I kept the mark from Simmons because I never had any interest in being with my soulmate, no matter who it was; I didn’t see any reason to break her heart. And I wanted the hard drive unlocked because I felt guilty when I realized I’d taken it with me by accident; I thought FitzSimmons might need the files on it while I was gone. Okay? That all make sense? You believe I’m not Hydra?”

She stares at him for the three longest seconds of his life. “I will,” she says finally. “When we go find Koenig.”

Dammit.

Skye’s eyes light up. Not with joy but with bitter triumph. Grant’s blood chills and he just knows he let something he shouldn’t have show on his face.

“We can’t,” she asks, “can we? Because you killed him.”

He moves, trying to contain her, but he fucks up again because he’s gotta go around the couch and, without any injuries to speak of, she’s able to leap right over it and take the path he left open to the door. He lunges back, straining his ribs so he can catch her wrist. For a second she falters, thrown off balance by his weight on her arm. But he taught her too well because she uses it to fall into him. Now he’s the one over-compensating, right into the fist she jams into his ribs.

Pain flares in his side. He drops to one knee as his entire chest seizes, making the pain even worse.

He hears the door. She slams it so hard the latch doesn’t engage and it swings back into the wall. He’s moved through worse pain before and makes himself do it again now. Up, on his feet, through the door. He’s already disengaged the base’s communications and she’ll never get a cell signal up here. He just has to beat her to the Bus and there’s enough distance between here and the hangar he’ll be able to recover in time to overtake her. He lifts his feet, starts them moving, prepares to pick up speed once he rounds the corner.

Skye’s there. Not twenty, thirty feet ahead like he expected. She’s _right there_ with an ICER aimed at his chest. There’s no time to dodge. He’s barely got time to realize what he’s looking at before she pulls the trigger.

 


	2. gave him my heart to break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team returns from Portland.

Jemma’s arguing with Fitz. Marcus Daniels’ powers were fascinating—in different circumstances she could have made a career out of them—but Fitz is sure they resulted purely from the disaster at his workplace, while Jemma insists genetics must have come into play. There are countless instances of individuals somehow surviving disasters which killed others and being gifted with powers in the process. There must be _some_ outside factor at play to account for their survival where others perished.

The argument has them lagging behind Coulson and Trip, and it isn’t until the sound of Skye’s high-pitched worry cuts through their discussion that Jemma realizes something’s wrong.

“-don’t know,” Skye’s saying to Coulson. She looks terrible, her hair in disarray and her hand—the one not clutching an ICER so hard it’s shaking—fisting convulsively. “The security footage has been wiped and I was afraid if he woke up-”

Coulson lays a hand on her shoulder, quieting her. “You did the right thing.”

Jemma looks past them, to the figure beginning to stir on the floor further down the hall. It’s Ward.

In a flash she’s pushing past Skye’s grasping hand and ignoring her plaintive “Jemma, wait.”

He’s barely conscious, as Skye said, but the position he’s in can only be aggravating his injuries from the Fridge. His legs are bound with extension cords and his arms are cuffed awkwardly to a series of pipes running between floor and ceiling. The bracing around the pipes prevents the cuff holding his left hand from rising higher than a foot off the floor, while his left is stretched high overhead, caught more than four feet off the ground.

There’s something wrong with that arm too; there’s no blood but it looks like a great chunk of skin is peeling away.

“What happened?” she asks while he drags himself back to consciousness. “Who did this to you?”

Her mind is spinning, running through the possible explanations for all of this. Might Koenig have been Hydra? That seems unlikely; he had ample opportunity to attack them individually when conducting their interviews.

But _someone_ must have tied Ward up.

May isn’t here. And it pains Jemma to think it, but there was that fuss about her spying on Coulson, him not allowing her to accompany them to Portland. Certainly she’s the only one capable of doing this to Ward even in his injured state. That would explain too why Skye appears uninjured; no matter what May’s loyalties, she wouldn’t want to hurt her.

“Simmons?” he asks, sounding far too distant for her peace of mind. He’s always so quick to bounce back. That he isn’t now might mean he’s been seriously injured.

There’s an argument happening behind her. Coulson and Skye about something—he’s being his usual, calm self but she’s frantic, nearly shouting.

“It’s all right,” he’s saying, “she’ll have to anyway-”

“No! She can’t! You don’t understand! He-”

Jemma ignores them when Ward jerks suddenly, his bound legs kicking at the floor.

“No,” he says while she bends over his arm.

“You’re okay,” she says and hopes the waver in her voice isn’t too obvious. She _hopes_ it’s true but there’s really no telling until he’s had a proper exam. “I’m just going to look. And it would be helpful if someone could get these handcuffs off him!” she calls to the others.

“Simmons,” Trip says. He’s close behind her—of course, he has medical training, she should have thought to ask for his help right away. Perhaps he can check Ward’s head while she looks at his arm.

But thoughts of asking him fade away when she finally sees the skin beneath what she now recognizes not as torn flesh, but as a malfunctioning photostatic veil. It’s the one he uses to hide his soulmark; she’s always known he wore one there, how silly of her not to realize sooner.

But the mark. That dark, curling design on his forearm. Jemma knows it like the back of her hand—better, even. She’d know that mark anywhere in the world.

Skye catches her. Solid arms wrapping around her, stopping her from backing into the wall when she hadn’t even realized she was moving.

“I’m sorry,” Skye says. Jemma only catches it because she says it over and over, an endless mantra she barely understands. What does Skye have to be sorry for? Ward’s the one who- who-

There’s no word for this. He lied, surely, but that seems too simple. A lie is a tiny thing. This? This is her whole _life_.

He offers no apologies, no explanations. He meets her eyes for brief moments, no sign of guilt in them, and then his gaze drops, moving as it so often does, to Skye.

Grateful as Jemma is for her support right now, there is a part of her that wishes it were anyone else holding her up.

 

\-----

 

She forgives Skye, of course. It takes some time—due mostly to Coulson’s decision that they’ll be abandoning Providence as soon as possible, now they know all of Hydra might have their location—but when the two cross paths in the lounge in the midst of preparations, Jemma takes a moment to make clear she doesn’t blame Skye at all.

“I wouldn’t have- I mean, _nothing happened_ ,” Skye says, looking like a defendant awaiting verdict in a murder trial. “We just kissed,” she says quietly.

Jemma knew that. Skye said as much when she revealed how she’d figured out Ward was Hydra, but hearing it again hurts the same as the first time.

Luckily, she’s had ample practice in recent months hiding how much it hurts her to see Ward and Skye growing closer. (It’s almost a relief now, knowing that her petty jealousy was born from more than just a silly crush.) She pastes on a smile.

“I know. And I’m not angry. Not with you.” Neither of them can help looking across the lounge, to the walls of the Cage.

Jemma has the absurd feeling he’s staring back at her through the layers of metal and wood and plastic. Silly, when she knows perfectly well the only one he would be staring at so intensely would be Skye.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she says, resting a hand briefly on Skye’s arm. She should hug her, she thinks, but can’t bring herself to.

“Neither did you,” Skye says quickly. “He said himself-” She cuts off, uncertain.

“No. You can tell me.” She tries to sound brave, like his words don’t matter to her at all. Inside, she braces herself for another blow.

Skye hesitates, throwing a glance towards the Cage before saying, “He said he always hid the mark because he never planned on being with his soulmate, no matter who it was.”

Jemma can’t help wondering if his soulmate had been Skye, would he have held to that so fiercely?

“Well, at least it’s nothing personal,” she says, though she fears her attempt at a bright tone comes out more biting than she means. “It’s not as though I wanted a Hydra traitor as a soulmate anyway,” she adds quickly.

Skye makes her own attempt at a smile, then wraps Jemma in a fierce, brief hug before a heavy thunk pulls them apart. It came from the hall, from the Cage. They exchange a look. Surely he hasn’t _already_ managed to-

But no, it’s Coulson. He looks old and the hangdog expression he wears has Jemma’s heart constricting. Then he realizes he has an audience and drags his mouth into a fatherly smile.

“That bad?” Skye asks.

Jemma can’t tell whether Coulson is relieved or annoyed that Skye’s cut off his excuses, but either way, his answer is an unaffected, “He’s not talking. No surprise there; he’s SHIELD’s-” his smile tightens- “Hydra’s best, I guess. We’ll give it a few days. See if he’s more talkative when he realizes no rescue’s coming.”

“Days?” Skye echoes. Jemma feels her glance, but she can’t tear her eyes away from Coulson to return it. They’ll be leaving Providence in _hours_ , maximum. And they can’t do that until-

“Have either of you seen Trip?”

“He was raiding the armory, last I saw him.”

Coulson nods and heads for the stairs. After a brief hesitation, Skye follows at his heels.

She’s going to argue with Coulson, tell him they _can’t_ leave until Ward answers the one question they can’t answer for themselves. There are several of those—what Garrett’s planning, what resources he has at his disposal—but only one that would deepen those lines on Coulson’s face and slow their departure.

Jemma waits until the sounds of Skye’s protests fade away and gives herself another twenty seconds just to be safe. Once she’s sure they’re gone, returned to the base—the armory is nearby but Fitz has been gathering food; it will be another ten minutes at least to reach him and return and that’s _if_  they hurry, which they’ll have no reason to think they should do—she moves swiftly across the lounge before she can lose her nerve.

The hall to the Cage has never felt longer or the walls closer. Her fingers stumble over her access code and she has to give it a second go.

Perhaps she should have wondered whether it would work. Has it even occurred to Coulson to revoke her access under the circumstances?

But he hasn’t and in moments she’s pulling the heavy door open.

Ward lifts his head from the table at the sound of her boots on the floor, but she sees his disappointment when he recognizes her. “Oh,” he says. She doesn’t have to ask who he thought she was. “Come to let me have it?”

She should. She has every right to yell and curse and beat him for the things he’s done to her. Ten months they’ve been working and living in the same space. For ten months, her crush on him deepened day by day, tearing away at her and leaving her aching for want of him. It was pathetic. _She_ was pathetic. And now she knows it was the bond. Even now it’s there, drawing her to him, making her care about how his ribs must be aching and the blood welling from the cut that’s reopened on his cheek.

She can’t face him, not head-on like this. So she steps back outside and shoves the panel hidden in the blank wall. It pops open, revealing a drawer stocked with various supplies. The handgun holds her attention for a spare second, but it’s the medkit she lifts free and carries into the Cage before closing the door firmly behind her.

He’s cuffed to the table, but he’s hardly harmless. Her heart quails when she comes along the side of the table to lay the kit open. It’s a new feeling, fearing him. She’ll have to get used to it.

“Seriously?” he asks while she wets a gauze with alcohol. “Is this some weird version of good cop/bad cop?”

“Would you rather I leave it?” she asks. She will. She’s under no orders to tend his injuries and, as she’s not that sort of doctor, she has no moral obligation to see to his health.

He studies her for long seconds as if he’s never bothered to take her measure before—perhaps he hasn’t. She’s only his soulmate; it’s not as though she was anything but a nuisance to him.

(That hurts. Deep in her chest, in the spot that’s been one constant ache for what must only be hours but feels like so much more, there’s a sharpness where her warm memories of his smiles used to sit. All the laughter and praise and happiness she ever drew out of him is tainted now by this. The pain must stop sometime, mustn’t it?)

He doesn’t answer, but he does tip his cheek up so she can better see and she sets to work. The familiarity makes it easier. This is just another injury—never mind that he suffered it while murdering good people—on the same man—never mind that he’s a traitor and a liar—she’s patched up hundreds of times before.

She wipes up the blood, sterilizes the wound, and this time sutures it properly. Her justification is that it needs it after how badly he’s reopened it (she hopes Skye did it) but she’s a terrible liar, even in her own mind, and suspicions are high she’s doing it solely because it will pain him more.

He has the decency to feel it. He remains obediently still but he hisses in his breath whenever the thread pulls and his pulse beats wildly beneath her hands.

“What happened to May?” she asks when she’s snipped the last stitch. May is why they’re all dragging their feet about leaving Providence. They’ve found Koenig—and Jemma would prefer not to think about what condition he was in—thanks to the tracker on his lanyard, but May’s lanyard is on the Bus and a brief search has turned up no sign of her. With Hydra surely on their way, none of them want to abandon the base before they know what’s become of her.

Ward moves his face, testing how it feels before answering. “I meant what I said to Coulson.”

“What did you say to Coulson?” she asks, genuinely curious.

Again he gives her that look like he’s never truly seen her before. She hates it, suddenly. After months of cherishing every scrap of attention he deigned to bestow on her, she can’t stand having any of it now.

She busies herself cleaning up the suture kit, pretending his answer doesn’t matter to her at all.

“He didn’t-”

It’s not like Ward to speak without thought, so she returns her attention to him, only to find his is now on the door.

It snaps back to her before she can look away. “Coulson didn’t send you in here, did he?”

She hitches her wrist awkwardly against her hip so as to keep from contaminating her jeans. “Do you honestly believe I could be in the same room as you if any of the others knew?”

He sits back, not quite slouching as his ribs will prevent that. “I guess not. I told Coulson I’d only talk to Skye.”

His voice is the sort of gentle that would be kind from anyone else. She wants to hit him.

But she’s too weak for that. His words drain the strength from her and she finds herself sitting in the seat across from him. “Of course you did,” she says while stripping off the gloves. She’s honestly not surprised anymore.

He offers no apologies, no excuses. He offers nothing of himself to her when she’s given him so much.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” she asks.

His expression is pitying. “I told you, I’ll only-”

“Yes, I know,” she says, not wanting to hear him say it again. “But do you really want Skye to be the one asking you about us?”

“There is no us,” he says and finally that faux kindness is gone. There’s anger in his voice and no small amount of bitterness.

“I know. I suppose I should thank you for that.” _That_ seems to take him off-guard. She’d be proud if she weren’t so bloody tired. “I won’t pretend I didn’t like the man who jumped out of a plane to save me—we both know that would be a lie—but you?” She looks him up and down, shaking her head as she goes. He’s still handsome, even in the mussed clothes and bloodstains, but he’s hardly what she wanted in a soulmate.

“Then I guess you’re welcome.” The sarcasm is odd. She would have expected him to go back to pretending to be kind. Perhaps this is simply more of the real him and he sees no reason to put him back in his box now he’s slipped free the once.

She lets the thoughts drift away. She doesn’t much care, honestly. There’s nothing he can do to hurt her worse.

“I didn’t thank you,” she reminds him. “I only said I _should_.”

His smile is sharp. It must be habit that has warmth easing the raw pain in her chest because she certainly isn’t attracted to that expression. Between the scar on his cheek and the fire in his eyes, he looks positively barbaric, a man more accustomed to fighting with fists and nails and teeth than blades and bullets.

She flips the kit shut and sits forward to secure the lid in place. “I suppose I’ll have to pass my question along to Skye-”

“No,” he says. His hand is on top of the kit, his fingers curling around the edge so that she can feel the warmth of his proximity but not his fingertips against hers.

She meets his eyes for long seconds before she realizes that single word was an answer and not a command. “Ah,” she says, sliding into a slouch.

“I thought about faking it,” he says, his focus slipping past her to the deeply entertaining hexagon pattern on the walls. “Hydra’s got the resources. I could’ve found some nice enough nobody who needed to be put down, faked his mark so you wouldn’t be waiting forever.” His eyes cut to her briefly, gauging her reaction. “If the uprising hadn’t happened, I would’ve been court marshaled for killing Nash. Kicked out of SHIELD or locked up, either way I would’ve had work with Hydra. I would’ve made it happen.”

She lets that sit for a moment. He would’ve given her her life back rather than leaving her with the hope of meeting her soulmate someday. It’s a strange sort of approximation of kindness, like he’s some alien creature that’s never encountered the real thing before but wants to give it a go.

That is, of course, assuming he’s telling the truth at all and this isn’t some lie he’s concocted in the past thirty seconds just to shut her up—or, more likely, to get himself back in Skye’s good graces.

“And when,” she asks slowly, “did you begin ‘thinking about’ this plan?”

Now he meets her eyes steadily. “A few months ago.”

So after they met and got to know one another. She doesn’t know whether that’s better or worse.

But the revelation has given her time to regain her strength and she stands, taking the kit to go. She hasn’t gotten the answers she came for, but at least she knows now she can face Ward. If she hadn’t done it right away, she might have had time to fear the encounter.

From behind her comes a heavy sigh. “May’s gone. She left on her own before I even went after Koenig.”

There’s just enough time between the two statements for Jemma’s heart to leap into her throat. With it still there, she can only turn to stare at Ward, waiting to see if he offers further information.

Surprisingly, he does. “I don’t know where she went. She just said she was going. You can check the Bus’s security, I didn’t mess with that, and she had a bag so probably some of her stuff’s missing from her bunk.”

May’s alive. Jemma very nearly cries in relief.

But she doesn’t have proof, not yet, and Ward is nothing if not a liar.

She turns to go, eager to reach the briefing room so she can verify his story and tell Coulson that May was at least not murdered by Ward. Her access code lets her out and she’s breathing the markedly warmer air of the hall, letting the door close behind her when she hears him—and she should have known, really, of course he couldn’t end it by being helpful.

“Next time,” he says, “make sure to send Skye.”

The door shuts with its usual solid thunk and she falls against it. She was wrong, earlier. He can still hurt her.

 


End file.
